Since 2001, OGRE has grown to become one of
the most popular open-source graphics rendering engines, and has been
used in a large number of production projects,
in such diverse areas as games, simulators, educational software,
interactive art, scientific visualisation, and others. You can read what other people have said about it, and it's free, so why not try it out?

Ogre 3D 1.7 Beginners Guide
makes it super easy for you to make your own monsters, spaceship shooters, weapons, enemies, and more! This book will teach you to develop 3D applications that are exciting and interesting and if used correctly can result in stunning games and simulations. You will start from the very beginning and then work your way up to complex scenes and stunning effects.

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Last year at CodeRabbit GmbH (my own company), we started a project called “Distributed Viewer”.

Distributed Viewer is an editor where users can upload models and edit materials in real time from any browser and instantly preview the changes not only in the browser, but also in all connected devices such as desktop PCs, Android and iOS devices at the same time.

Early in the development cycle we have realized that the current Ogre material system was too limiting and too complicated to do something like this. So after many discussions we came to the point where we decided to fund the initial development of the Ogre HLMS “High Level Material System”. More details about the HLMS can be found in this post from Matias.

With HLMS in our bag we have created PBS (Physically Based Shading) materials for the uploaded models. Our PBS shader is based on this moving-frostbite-to-pbr (the HLMS files will be released with the upcoming backport). The following image shows a screenshot from the material designer.

Time to give a progress report:
At the time that I am writing these lines, I am making the final preparations for publicly releasing the AZDO branch aka “Ogre 2.1″ (still unnamed as of yet). This doesn’t mean it’s ready / finished, but rather that it becomes public, as there has been a lot of development that has been done behind closed doors.

Good news! We have officially added the v2-0-0RC1 tag to the Ogre repository (commit) indicating that we reached our first Release Candidate milestone for Ogre 2.0!

Our original plan was to tag this release as “CTP” (Community Technology Preview) and the upcoming AZDO (Approaching Zero Driver Overhead) improvements as “final”. However this proved to be very confusing for the community and in fact presented two practical concerns:

v2-0-0RC1 is actually very stable and relatively easy to port to when coming from Ogre 1.9 or Ogre 1.10 (= current unstable default branch). The external API interface is quite similar, with performance benefits from efficient frustum culling and scene graph management (plus it’s multi-threaded). Several users in the community had already started porting to it.

The AZDO branch was going to be labelled as “final”. Even though being quite impressive feature- and performance-wise, it is not complete, cannot be considered stable, and is far from actually being final. Furthermore, porting from Ogre 1.9 or even from Ogre 2.0-RC1 to the AZDO branch is not a trivial task as the external API changes are considerable.

Therefore we concluded that:

The “CTP” branch will be released as Ogre 2.0 and is a good stepping stone for projects that require better performance without the high risk associated with porting when there are big engine changes.

The “AZDO” branch will be released as Ogre 2.1 at some point in the future. External interface changes are quite significant and porting to this version requires more work and inherently results in more risk.

Our main focus of development will be on Ogre 2.1. We will only be providing basic bug fixes for Ogre 2.0 to be able to dedicate more resources to Ogre 2.1.

Note: While more and more focus will shift to Ogre 2.x, we will not immediately abandon Ogre 1.x. In fact, there is still at least one release in the making (Ogre 1.10). Once we have a more concrete timeline for it, we will announce the details.

With this year’s Google Summer of Code already slightly being visible at the horizon it was time for us to get things started again: We are hoping to find a group of capable and motivated students that will help us move Ogre even further. In order to guide this effort, we created a list of potential GSoC projects that we deem most relevant for this year and consider manageable in the given GSoC time frame: GSoC 2015 Project Ideas. There is also a dedicated idea discussion thread that might yield further insights and ideas.

We welcome everyone to chime in either with additional ideas or comments regarding potential projects and join the combined efforts to make this one important cornerstone for a successful Ogre year 2015.

On a related note: The so far private Ogre Hlms/AZDO branch will most likely be made publicly available around the end of this week. This of course is needed for the related GSoC idea to be possible.

Once again, we want to highlight one of the many games based on Ogre3D that have come out recently. This time: “Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms“.

As usual we asked the team behind the game if they could share some insights into the Ogre3D usage and how the game was built in general, and the guys from bitComposer were kind enough to provide those:

The game was developed on an older Ogre version, but continually upgraded to the most recent versions (currently 1.10). We are thrilled to get the game to Ogre 2.0 though as there are some limits which we are not able to overcome with the 1.x versions (mostly related to hyper-threading and slow scene management).

Apart of a few bugs fixes we have not made any modifications to Ogre core. However, we are using some extensions of shader rendering pipeline. To be more specific, we have modified deferred shading with cubemaps projected lights, added off-screen particles, outlines glow and color correction to name the biggest changes.

We are supporting both DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 renderers. DX11 was included because of the improper detection of graphics cards on some computer with multiple graphics cards with DX9 version.

For 3D modelling, animation and export we are using Maya. Some outsources create their models in 3D Studio and we import those into Maya environment and export into the games.

We have developed our own editor which we are using for scene assembling which includes ragdoll editors, lightning.

For particle effects we are using Particle Universe with in-game editor for seamless implementation of particles to the game environments.

For physics simulation in Shadows we have used the Bullet library (mostly for collisions and ragdolls).

Scripting is done using LUA language. A lot of external files are XML formatted.

For text content handling (there is a lot of text content as you can imagine) we are using our own proprietary tool Locedit which is also available for 3rd parties if someone may be interested in. It features multiple languages, Unicode, subtitler for movies, XLS export/import, voice check and direction, etc.

Game content is encrypted and packed to improve loading times.

User generated content is planned to be distributed using Steamworks.

The entire toolset will be released for the community together with the game sometimes in the near future. We believe that Ogre community may benefit from our tools even for their own projects… It certainly will lack the polish and proper documentation of Unreal but it likely may be the most complex tool for Ogre and available for all Shadows owners without any additional fee.

We are currently starting porting of Shadows to Ogre 2.0 together with the Ogre team, so I hope our work will contribute to early availability of complete 2.0 version of Ogre.

First off: Happy New Year to everyone!

As the old year starts to slowly fade away in our rear view mirror, we want to look back on what 2014 had in store for Ogre3D and at the same time look ahead what 2015 might bring. So strap in for this ride back to the beginning of last year…

Review of 2014

It all started off with one key event early in 2014 when one well-known (at least in Ogre3D circles) Argentinian fellow joined the team: Matias Goldberg. In the last few months he was (and still is) the driving force behind the efforts to develop the revamped Ogre 2.0 version. Without him that would not have been possible in its current form…or more accurately: It would not have been possible…full stop.

The work on Ogre 2.0 was one of the cornerstones in last year’s efforts, but of course the rest of the team was not sitting around idly, but instead focused on Ogre 1.10. The DirectX11 and GL3+ render systems in particular received a lot of attention and will be among the highlights of this upcoming release. More on that later once we arrive back in the present time on our journey through the last 365 days.

Two other notable technical points are the addition of WebGL support to Ogre3D as well as AZDO work:

AZDO: As part of his Ogre 2.0 efforts Matias has been working on optimizing Ogre3D from an AZDO (Almost Zero Driver Overhead) point of view. For now this only covers the GL3+ render system, but will be extended in the future. A dedicated post from Matias will follow, outlining the changes and improvements in more detail.

Of course all that work on the engine itself only makes sense if there is an active community and eco-system actually making use of it. Some projects to showcase are listed below:

So all in all it was another pretty good year for Ogre3D, but we got quite a few things to optimize and change for 2015…and that is where we are back in the present and “put the pedal to the metal” to jump-start into 2015 and all we have planned for it:

Outlook for 2015

One of the first things we want to finish is the go-live of the new Ogre3D website we have planned. This basically entails a face-lift and getting rid of the slightly annoying ad banners. So stay tuned for that.

Another major step will be the release of two new Ogre versions, namely Ogre 1.10 as well as the first Ogre 2.0 CTP (Community Technology Preview). Once we have set the final dates we will let you know via a blog post as well as where to find further details. This especially pertains to Ogre 2.0 for which we want to set up some dedicated sources of information to help with the upcoming transition once 2.x nears its first stable release.

At the same time, the regular development efforts will continue and as always we encourage everyone to chime in wherever possible, by providing feedback and input in the forums, reporting issues on our JIRA tracker and ideally also help solving those by submitting pull-requests for our official source code repository. Additionally, donations are always welcome as well to help managing the infrastructure costs.

This last point nicely leads to another thing we want to tackle this 2015. Go-live of our CI server (Continuous Integration) for automated testing of Ogre3D. Once this is ready to use, we will announce it here as well in a dedicated post.

We of course also hope to participate again in this year’s GSoC after we did not make the cut last year. The preparation for it will begin soon by opening up the discussion in our GSoC forum section regarding interesting potential projects ideas. If you have one, note it down and join in the upcoming idea discussion.

Lastly, we also plan to do another Ogre User Survey to get some insights into the user base along with its priorities and wishes and some information about the usage of our engine in general. As you already guessed: This will also be covered in a dedicated announcement once we survey is open. Prior to it, we will trigger a public discussion in the forums regarding the questions we want to ask. Feel free to join in if you have questions that might be of interested and that you would like to see included in the survey.

That’s about it in terms of what we have planned right now, but as usual we will have to see how things pan out. As usual let us know what you think in the forums…and then let’s get cracking.

This time we have something new from the Ogre3D eco system: The Ogre3d based game engine “NeoAxis” has just been released for free.

NeoAxis Group Ltd is glad to announce that the universal 3D development framework NeoAxis 3D Engine is now completely free, as the community has been asking for it. You can freely download the recently published SDK 3.0, which includes all the features previously reserved to Unlimited and Source licences. From now, the engine will developed as free tool. Paid licenses will still give customers access to a bigger part of the engine’s source code.

Licensing Changes

NeoAxis 3D Engine is available in 3 editions, each providing a different level of access to the engine’s source code.

Free Edition — free development environment, which includes all features of the engine and tools. Includes the ability to expand the engine by creating add-ons.

Professional Edition — includes the full source code of the engine’s tools and bigger access to the source code of the engine components.

Today we want to highlight another game based on Ogre3D that made its way successfully onto Steam: Kromaia. Check it out on Steam and watch the trailer at the end of this post.

The frantic old-school action of classic coin-op shoot-‘em-ups comes crashing headlong into the 21st century with Kromaia, exclusively for PC. Explosive high-octane blasting combines with hordes of enemies in a 360˚ environment, allowing you to fly, spin and shoot anywhere and everywhere!

Where most shooters see you racing along a fixed path to blast anything in your way, Kromaia does things differently. Set in three-dimensional space, you’re free not just to explore but also dodge and blast through hordes of enemies all intent on destroying you! With your objectives spread out in all directions, it’s a true test of high-speed flying and sharpshooting skill – only the greatest space pilots need apply!

The Bigger They Are… – Survive through all your objectives and you’ll have a bigger challenge ahead: gigantic bosses that need to be destroyed before they destroy you!

Take Your Pick – Four unique craft, each with their own style of weaponry, let you experience the action of Kromaia in your own way. Rapid-fire guns, homing shots, powerful blasts or melee strikes… it’s totally up to you!

Long time no post, but that certainly doesn’t mean that there is nothing going on. In fact there are multiple new entries queued up, so stay tuned. Here comes the first:

The guys over at the “ManicNorth” studio asked us to spread the word about there current Ogre3D based project called “Seasoned Tactics” and of course we happily oblige. It is a turn-based tactics arena game where players take control of the four seasons to battle for control of a tiled board. They are currently seeking support for their new creation trough Steam Greenlight as well as through their ongoing Kickstarter campaign.